Hessians and Hellhounds

by Tilly Wallace

  Hannah gripped the railing as ideas spun in her head. “Not a meadow, Mary. I believe it is the Nile flowing across the entranceway and running straight to the bottom of the tower.”

  2

  For all her gentle demeanour, Wycliff discovered that his wife contained a ravenous beast—curiosity. A hungry demon arose within her that demanded to be fed information. It took Frank two days to knock through from the small sliver of a room to the tower beyond, and to tidy up the space to his satisfaction. Two long days in which Hannah paced and tried to concentrate on other tasks.

  It caused Wycliff some amusement that Frank refused to let the lady of Mireworth through until he had removed the debris, wiped down the dust, and ensured there were no sharp edges that might harm her. When Hannah tried to sneak in, the stitched-together man growled at her and placed Barnes as watchman. His wife developed a sudden interest in gardening and when Frank caught her peering in the window with a weed grasped in her hand, the large man nailed up a board to block her view.

  In the interim, Wycliff marvelled at the change in the enormous entrance foyer with the tiles restored to their original sharp colours. While most houses of the Georgian era had floors patterned in simple geometric designs, yet again an odd departure had been taken with Mireworth’s decoration. A painted landscape of life next to a fertile Nile spread between the two griffins. Or were they sphinx, after all?

  The tiles had always had murky tones when he was a boy, and he never gave them any thought, except for how they gave away his boot treads when he was trying to sneak up on Lisbeth. In hindsight, he wondered if someone had deliberately obscured the pattern. The layer of grime that Hannah, Mary, and Helga had removed was so thick, old, and evenly dispersed over the entire space that they speculated someone had deliberately painted it over.

  “Are you sure you don’t know the history of this house, Wycliff? I don’t know if she could be any more obvious in her clues pointing to Egypt. All we are lacking is the reason.” Seraphina worked to construct a magical bridge across the tile river. The gentle arch could either be crossed, or it would shimmer and reform behind anyone who strode through its delicate sides.

  A weight pressed inside him. “I did not have a good relationship with my father. I suspect he knew, but kept the information from me. When I discovered the tower he was…displeased and made it clear I was never to go there, nor ask about it again. Whatever information he had about Mireworth’s history passed with him.”

  Hannah scoured the journals, looking for any reference to the history of the house and the origins of the family. While Wycliff had sold off the books he’d inherited, his father might have edited the collection of diaries and such. For all he knew, they could have been consigned to a bonfire years ago.

  “There is one possible source we could consult to learn about Mireworth’s origins,” Hannah said from by his side. She stood next to the image of a lounging crocodile, as though she didn’t want to stand on the painted animal.

  “Who is that?” he asked. The only servant left from the early days was Mrs Rossett, and she didn’t have any whispers or rumours to share. Mr Hartley had said he had collected stories about the estate, but they found none when they searched the journals in his cottage.

  “Lord de Cliffe.” Her eyes blazed with the ideas sparking in her mind.

  “He’s dead.” Wycliff doubted even bones would remain in the family crypt after five hundred years.

  “And you are a hellhound. Imagine if you could find his soul on the other side and ask him directly what exactly he got up to in Egypt that created such a firm grasp on this parcel of land. Or alternatively, we find an aftermage who can communicate with spirits, and see if he would come forward for a chat.” She had such an earnest expression that he swallowed his rebuttals and doubts.

  “You will have to write a list of all the souls I must seek out when I follow the inky path.” He was saved from any further discussion about when he might take that one-way stroll to Hell by the arrival of Frank.

  The monster shuffled out from under the stairs. “Ready,” he intoned.

  Wycliff expected Hannah to squeal and rush to be first. Instead, she seemed frozen to the spot like the crocodile. He took her hand and whispered her name. “Hannah? Why are you not racing me to the tower?”

  She turned and placed her hand on his arm. “I need a moment to reflect. I have so many questions. Will they finally be answered, or will we find only a manger for wintering animals? I’m not sure I could live with the disappointment if we find only fossilised excrement.”

  He wrapped one arm around her waist and walked her to the narrow room they had dubbed the waiting room. “I doubt a purple mist arises from long-dead animals, even if the place had been full of donkeys with stomach complaints. Your mother has already confirmed it is of magical origin.”

  He let her go first through the door to survey Frank’s hard work. The monster had removed the boards from the windows and sunlight streamed into the space. He had cleaned out the demolished wall, sacrificing the built-in seat in the process. Now, the space beyond revealed the secret it hid.

  Frank had created an eight-foot-wide opening to allow light to reach the tower for the first time in over a hundred years, and greatly increased the space of the original waiting room, where once Wycliff could touch both walls with outstretched arms.

  Hannah let out a soft gasp at the light-filled and spacious room. The curve of the tower drew the eye and its stone glowed a soft pink. The tower was enclosed in a corner of Mireworth with an eight-foot gap at the widest point between tower and wall. Then the space narrowed on two sides of the ancient fortification, where its curves butted up against its prison walls.

  “Why don’t you go first?” Wycliff suggested.

  She let go of his hand and stepped into the tower’s presence. No one spoke as they filed in behind her, Sir Hugh pushing Seraphina in her bathchair. Hannah walked around the available circumference, one hand stroking the stone as she went. When she reached the far corner, she turned and walked as far as she could back the other way. Wycliff watched her careful inspection.

  “Bother. No door,” she muttered when she returned to his side.

  Half of the tower’s circumference was blocked, due to being located in a corner. Wycliff didn’t need his wife to voice her next question. He had resigned himself to more holes in Mireworth’s battered body.

  “There could be a door somewhere on the other side of it, if we could approach it from outside?” Hannah rested her hands on a block and tried to peer into the tiny space between tower and exterior wall.

  “I draw the line at knocking down external walls,” Wycliff said.

  “Perhaps I might be of assistance.” Seraphina wheeled herself closer. “The stonework is quite exquisite and I’ll not have anyone taking a sledgehammer to it. Let me see if the mortar will cooperate with me.”

  She raised her hands and placed them on a spot illuminated by a ray of sunlight. The mage bowed her head, and soft words whispered around the room and brushed over them. At first nothing happened. Then a faint crackle reached Wycliff’s ears. The block under the mage’s palms wriggled and the mortar holding it in place jiggled. Tiny pieces dropped to the ground with soft pops. Once all the mortar around the stone had separated itself from its neighbours, it marched to the edge and leapt to the floor like lemmings from a cliff. Then the stone itself slid an inch out of place.

  Wycliff took hold of the stone and pulled it free. A whoosh of escaped air blew through the hole. He caught a whiff of old dust and turned his head to cough. He placed the stone on the ground in a corner as Lady Miles worked on another.

  Piece by piece, she urged the mortar to surrender its grip on the stones. Then Frank or Wycliff would remove the block. Hannah fetched a broom and swept up the litter of chips. Soon, the men had a pile of blocks stacked to one side. The mage had worked her magic to create a slender opening, somewhat like the tear in the air when Wycliff summoned the void.

 
; They gathered around Seraphina, which then blocked the sunlight streaming over their shoulders. But they saw enough of the rounded interior to see something large squatting in the middle of the room.

  Hannah placed a hand on his arm, keen excitement burning in her eyes. “I think, given how long the tower has been bricked up, it might be prudent to use your hellhound vision before we enter, Wycliff? We don’t want to anger any long-imprisoned spirits.”

  He nodded, and the group stepped back. Sir Hugh pulled Seraphina away, and they clustered by the opening to give Wycliff space.

  Wycliff closed his eyes and sought the ember within him. Blowing upon it, he let the flames flare into life and then grabbed hold of them as he opened his eyes. Because of where the mage had created the gap, sunlight burst through and into a room that had lain in darkness for six hundred years.

  He stepped into the bottom level of the tower. The brightness created a vivid red bolt that pulsed in the centre of the room and seared into his brain. He narrowed his eyes against the light and looked around the room. The musty odour was much stronger now, with the faint richness of earth and mushrooms—though the room seemed dry, with no fungi growing in the corners.

  He ignored the enormous shape hunkering down in the middle of the space and searched for any entombed souls. Had the original de Cliffe walled up a troublesome wife? Or perhaps he trapped a rival for his lady’s affection, quietly done away with? Nothing moved within, not even the scuttle of a mouse running from sudden exposure.

  Emboldened by the silence, Wycliff walked around the curved wall and used his peripheral vision to search for any spirit residue. When he completed a circuit, he turned to the central object. Made of granite, it appeared to be a sarcophagus some eight feet long, three feet in both height and width, and with a lid two inches thick. The purple mist filtered through the stone lid and drifted upward. Whatever it was, or whatever was hidden inside, he had found the source of the odd light.

  He let go of the ember inside him, thought of winter snow, and extinguished the internal fire. He shook his head as his vision adjusted to the mortal realm again. Walking to the jagged tower doorway, he addressed the expectant faces beyond. “There are no souls or demons lurking in here. Nor is there any door other than the one Lady Miles just made. The mist the hound perceives is coming from what appears to be a tomb.”

  Hannah edged closer, and he held out a hand to her. Her fingers trembled as they slid into his grasp. Wycliff stayed by her side as she approached the granite construction.

  “Do you really think it’s a tomb?” she whispered.

  “Yes. I doubt this tower was a vegetable cellar or that this object is a linen chest.” He wondered whom de Cliffe had buried in the tower. Someone he couldn’t bear to be parted from—even in death, a voice in the depths of his mind answered. People did odd things in the throes of grief. Perhaps this was his ancestor’s tribute to a great love.

  Hannah knelt and ran a hand along the smooth stone. Sunlight flickered into the base of the tower and caressed the sarcophagus for the first time in hundreds of years. Hannah studied each side. “Its sides are plain, but the ends both have a square in the centre carved with hieroglyphics.”

  “So your ancestor looted more than a few pretty tablets from Egypt, eh, Wycliff?” Sir Hugh chuckled as he pushed his wife into the room.

  The older couple halted next to the tomb. Seraphina examined the engraving on one end. Roughly a foot square, the very middle had a tall oval shape containing a few symbols, then the whole was surrounded by rows of hieroglyphics.

  “Definitely Egyptian,” Seraphina murmured. Then she placed her hands on the lid and sucked in a breath. “The mist Wycliff can detect is a faint magical trace. I cannot see it as he does, but I can sense it. Whoever rests here once possessed a great deal of magical ability in life. In ancient Egypt, mages and aftermages were the priests and priestesses in their temples, and they treated magic with some reverence. Given that this trace has endured for centuries, I believe it most likely that this tomb contains someone who was once a mage.”

  “De Cliffe stole the body of a mage from a temple during the Crusades?” Hannah turned wide eyes on her husband.

  Wycliff held up his hands in a defensive posture. “I had no idea, but I wonder if my father knew the associated story. All I can offer is more questions—the primary one being why? If this were some looted trophy, why brick it into a tower? And why hide the tower during the construction of the new house?”

  Seraphina patted the stone lid. “We will have to dig deep to uncover any other clues that might answer all our questions.”

  Sir Hugh shuffled around the tomb, staring at his feet. He stopped at one point close to the wall. Then he kicked at the centuries of dust and dirt that had accumulated. “There is something here.”

  Wycliff and Hannah joined him. Sir Hugh bent down and used his handkerchief to clear away the spot he had worked loose with the toe of his boot.

  “There’s something carved into the floor.” Wycliff glanced up. “This is the very corner of the house and might once have been the outer corner of the original fort.”

  “It’s hieroglyphics again, Mother,” Hannah said.

  “Help me down, please, Hugh.” Seraphina held out her arms.

  The physician plucked his wife from her chair and carried her over. Then he edged away to let the sun brush the surface. The mage incanted the spell to make the symbols reform into letters and then translate themselves. She muttered to herself and tilted her head to read the script.

  “One of mine, for one of yours. A bargain struck, the tower endures,” Seraphina whispered.

  The words sent a chill over Wycliff’s skin, and his stomach lurched. One of mine for one of yours. What sort of exchange had his ancestor made that the rest of the family had tried to cover up? “I wonder if, over the years, my ancestors tried to tear down the tower but were unsuccessful, and so it was encased instead. But what was exchanged as part of this bargain?” With all the clues pointing to Egypt and the underworld, part of him could take a guess. But he didn’t like the answer his brain supplied.

  Sir Hugh placed his wife back in the bathchair, and she wheeled herself over to the tomb. “I am only speculating, but if whoever lies here came from Egypt and is the one of mine, then following that logic, the one of yours would be a descendant of de Cliffe.”

  “To what end, though?” Hannah gripped Wycliff’s arm and leaned closer to his side.

  He pressed against her warmth to dispel the chill creeping over him. He searched his memory for any snippets he could remember from childhood, but that particular cupboard in his head was bare. “I don’t know, Hannah. Most men bring back trophies from war for either money or power. If this is a mage, perhaps de Cliffe brought the person here to perform some task. Then when they died, they could not be returned to Egypt and so were entombed instead?”

  “If that were the case, what I find rather curious is that from my recollections, there is no mention in the mage histories of any Egyptian mage visiting English shores. Yet such an occasion should have been recorded—if the mage were living. Which lends more weight to de Cliffe’s bringing back a mummy as a curiosity.” Seraphina traced a finger around the carved oval inside the square on the sarcophagus.

  “We are going in circles. I cannot see a looted mummy creating a scandal or necessitating being walled up in a tower. From what we find here, I think it is not a coincidence that the hellhounds targeted Wycliff.” Hannah met his stare and gave voice to the cold lump in his stomach.

  “Perhaps whomever de Cliffe struck the bargain with took six hundred years to collect on what he was owed.” Seraphina crafted a single lotus bloom from the air, the edges a deeper pink than the rest of the flower, and laid it on the tomb.

  “That’s a rather unfair bargain. This de Cliffe got whatever advantage in the twelfth century, and then Wycliff here gets bitten by a hellhound and turned into one of them.” Sir Hugh shook his head.

  Wycliff stared
at the tomb. A purely financial motive didn’t sit well inside him. Nor would a mummy as a trophy have generated the secrecy around the tower. There was a deeper reason here, one ordinary men couldn’t fathom. He glanced at his in-laws. A man who continued to love his wife beyond death…

  “We’ll keep looking for answers, Hannah. There are so many clues, we have only to put them all together.”

  “Well, Wycliff, you have simply the most fascinating skeleton in the family closet. I cannot wait to see what you and Hannah discover next,” Seraphina said.

  3

  Their discovery churned up new emotions in Hannah. Excitement flared within her at finding another link to Egypt and the origins of the Afflicted curse. Then she plunged into worry at what bargain had been struck that could reach through the centuries to ensnare Wycliff. A tingle of curiosity crept along her limbs at how their paths were intertwined. Her mother’s ability truly was magical in how it had guided her to insist Wycliff be included among the guests at Lizzie’s engagement ball. How different would Hannah’s life be today if he had not attended?

  She tackled the worn and hard-to-read family journals with renewed vigour, determined to find some snippet to advance their quest. She took a stack of musty books to the conservatory and placed them on the table. With a fresh pot of tea at her elbow and Sheba asleep in the sun at her feet, Hannah pulled a journal from the pile.

  A history of some sort must have passed from father to son that resulted in the Lord Wycliff of a hundred years ago enclosing the tower when he constructed the new house. After two hours of squinting at terrible handwriting (which made her imagine that the lord in question had spent more time outdoors than in the schoolroom), her next clue was found in the same hard-to-read journal as the first reference.